We're not getting any younger... yet. Jamie Justice: The New Metrics of Functional Aging
Feb 18, 2026
Jamie Justice, EVP of XPRIZE Health and adjunct professor in geroscience, explains the $101M race to restore muscle, cognitive, and immune function in one year. She discusses building new clinical trial standards, practical biomarkers like RDW, tapping legacy 'dark data,' and smart combinations of exercise, timing, and therapies to reclaim real-world independence.
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Unexpected Move To Lead The XPRIZE
- Jamie recounts being recruited unexpectedly to lead XPRIZE Healthspan after prior geroscience collaborative work.
- She saw the prize as a way to scale consensus, endpoints, and translation from preclinical to clinical work.
Multi-System Functional Targets
- XPRIZE Healthspan measures function across muscle, cognition, and immunity in one-year trials.
- Teams must show improvement equivalent to offsetting 10–20 years of decline, not just slowing aging.
Function Over Binary Lifespan
- Lifespan (toes test) is a clear animal metric but not the most relevant human goal.
- For people, autonomy, independence, and function matter more than simply living longer.